Yora looks at Traveller (not a review)

So I’ve been reading the Traveller rulebook these last few days…

I’ve been struggling for quite some time with getting the appeal of this classic game, as browsing through the pages doesn’t really bring up anything that looks special, and trying to just start on the first page and continue forward very quickly slams you into the wall that is character creation in Traveller. Which I believe is quite famously known as the most elaborate mini-game in the history of pen and paper games. It’s not quite as scary as it first looks, and once you have made your character you will never have to deal with it again for the rest of the campaign, unless your character dies. But for my ADHD brain, it’s a whole lot of information being thrown at me all at once, for which I don’t have any real context at this point. But there’s been a lot of chatter about Traveller over the past months, much of which did sound quite intriguing. And so this week I made the decision to just skip the whole part about character creation for now, since this is something I wouldn’t have to deal with anymore once a campaign starts, and instead read everything else in the book first instead.

And I can absolutely see the appeal of this game. Scum and Villainy is a great system, but as a GM, I actually have always enjoyed it a lot to have games be at least a little bit an attempt of simulating a world, with NPC and creature stats, equipment and loadout management, vehicle rules, and the like. The old Star Wars d6 game does that, and it’s by far the best of the many Star Wars RPG out there. But if I don’t want to explicitly run a Star Wars campaign, I don’t feel so sure that the generic d6 Space system would be the best choice. And then there’s of course also Stars Without Number, but something about that game just doesn’t feel quite right to me. I think it’s the OD&D framework on which it builds. Traveller is the fourth game dominating in this particular niche of games, and my first impression so far is that it actually could be the thing for me. Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition specifically. From what I’ve seen on the internet, almost everyone seems to be playing either Classic Traveller from 1977, or Mongoose Traveller 2e from 2016. I went with Mongoose over Classic. Don’t ask me why.

There is a lot about this game that makes me think “Hey, this reminds me of Stars Wars d6.”, “This reminds me of Scum and Villainy.”, and “This reminds me of Coriolis.” Because, of course, all these games are build on standard and conventions first established by Traveller.

I mentioned the issue with character creation being a rather elaborate process above. But that is indeed something that you do probably just once at the start of a campaign, and after that it won’t be part of actually playing the game. So that’s something that doesn’t bother me as much anymore than I thought it would. (Even though I still don’t have it fully figured out yet.)

Another thing that always sounded weird is that characters don’t get experience points to improve their abilities. But realistically speaking, what’s the time frame over which a Traveller campaign will take place? Maybe a year, or perhaps two? And probably a large majority of that will be spend idle in hyperspace waiting to arrive at your destination. Characters improving their skills to a clearly noticeable degree isn’t really part of the fiction with games like these. Yes, Luke Skywalker gained a lot of new abilities over three movies. But Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and the two droids didn’t. And people probably don’t play Traveller to play a Jedi apprenticeship story. However, you do of course gain resources. Money, equipment, and allies. This can always be a source of significant growth in what characters can accomplish and how they engage with the obstacles of the world. And to be fair, not having to deal with deciding on new abilities when leveling up actually does sound refreshing.

The one main negative thing I noticed is the dubious editing quality of the rulebook. One of the very first things you read when starting with the character creation rules after the introduction is “assign the scores in any order you wish to the six characteristics, starting with Strength”. And there are so many cases of this. Sentences that have correct spelling and no grammar mistakes. But when you try to understand how the game works from reading the rules, there are constantly cases where the sentences are missing important information. It’s not too terrible, and most of the time I think I can assume what the writer was trying to say, based on 25 years of having learned many different RPG systems. But I always have to guess. My impression is that this was proofread by someone who already knew the game well and only checked for spelling and grammar. But when you write an RPG rulebook, you really should “playtest” it by having people try to learn the game from the text. In just a day, I could have easily filled a page with questions that would only have taken the addition of half a sentence to the respective sections.

It did awaken some vague memories from back in the day when I was very active on many RPG forums and people quite regularly making jokes about one publisher in particular for the really bad editing of their books. I am not completely sure, but I think that might actually have been Mongoose.

But overall, I really quite like what I’ve been seeing. Over the years, Traveller has been recommended to me many times, in particular in regards to discussions about my Iridium Moons setting. I’ll have to see what my ADHD brain is going to say in two weeks from now. But I think I might actually prefer this one over Scum and Villainy for running an Iridium Moons campaign.

Have I had enough Star Wars?

As far as I recall, I saw Star Wars for the first time at about this time of the year, 30 years ago in 1995. Star Wars has been my favorite thing in fiction ever since.

But the last Star Wars work that I was invested in was the Knights of the Old Republic comic series that ran from 2006 to 2010. Which ended 15 years ago. Before that, the last two Star Wars works that engaged me were KotOR and Jedi Academy in 2003. That’s 22 years ago.

I have been a fan of old Star Wars stories almost three times longer than I was a fan of current Star Wars stories.

And I still am a huge fan of the three movies and many of the great works from the 90s and the early 2000s. But I also feel that the old setting might have been played out, and its potential for additional stories sufficiently explored and exhausted. As a gamemaster, I always felt like the classic Star Wars setting is a great world for endless adventures. You can always have more stories with new heroes, and new villains, and new planets. But in practice, it feels to me like mostly just more of the same. Things get renamed and reshuffled, but it’s mostly the same old pieces with the same old plots. And they are great and exciting pieces and plots. But they have already been done.

There is of course always the option to come up with new kinds of heroes and new kinds of villains who are dealing with different issues and conflicts. But in that case, why set those stories in Star Wars? For movie, TV, and videogame productions, the answer is simple. Brand recognition. Millions of people will throw a lot of money at almost everything because it is branded as Star Wars. But as a hobbyist who has no means to commercialize something with the Star Wars brand, that point is moot.

Star Wars does still endlessly inspire me to do and make new things. New ideas for new cultures, new factions, and new conflicts that can produce new stories. But in this creative space, tying everything to the framework of Star Wars does not support and enhance the new ideas, but rather restricts and limits them. With Iridium Moons, I do have the full freedom to just do my own things, and execute all my own new ideas as a coherent world that does not have to struggle against its foundations.

The Star Wars d6 RPG is such a great and exciting game, and even the d20 Saga Edition is very evocative in its own way. But I feel to me, as a GM, the setting has been played out. I still love the idea of running Star Wars campaigns, but when I sit down to sketch out a draft for adventures, I do find this world quite lacking in hooks for new stories to tell in it.

Star Wars has stopped expanding on its original form a long, long time ago. And all the new forms people have come up with to extend the profits that can be extracted from the brand have been doing nothing for me. And I don’t have any ideas for how to do more with that classic world either. So perhaps it has become time to reframe my relationship with Star Wars as a deep love for three movies and a few books and comics that I can take from the shelf every year to enjoy them for what they are, rather than as this endless playground that should be expanded into perpetuity. And I think I can keep that love going for another 50 years.

DIYRPG failed because we didn’t gatekeep enough!

Back in 2009, lots of small personal websites covering homemade pen and paper RPG material and general thoughts around the subject popped up. Mostly as a decentralized forum for people very dissatisfied with how D&D had been developing for the last 15-20 years and the direction it kept heading for to the future. Because people found common ground in how D&D used to be in the olden days, it became known as the Oldschool Revival. Unsurprisingly, this became a fertile space for “Good Old Boys” to connect with other like-minded middle-aged straight white men and reminiscent how everything used to be better before their cherished private space was invaded by newcomers (young, queer, non-white, and women) who kept trying to put their own stamps on the traditional values of the game.

Not saying that RPGs are a hobby that is particularly attractive to misogynists, homophobes, and racists. But any space where older white men come together to bond over their teenage memories is inherently a potential hotbed for them to thrive.

But many of them knew how to be subtle, and I guess young white men like me might have been oblivious to things that women and non-white people would have spotted from miles away. And sure, there was drama and some kerfuffles, but hey, many of these controversial guys created really creative and evocative RPG material! Some of it a bit try-hard edgy, but very different from the output of the big commercial publishers.

Zak S., James Raggi, and Venger Satanis were all big darlings of the OSR. I too marveled at their creative output.

But with success and adoration, the masks started to come down. First gradually, then increasingly. But people loved their work, and saw themselves as members of a friendly community, and so nobody really wanted to rock the boat. Also, as people engaged in more research on the famous creators from the early days in the 70s, things came to light that previously nobody seemed to have paid attention to. The creator of Tekumel and the inheritor of the rights to Wilderlands turned out to be tied to Neo-Nazis.

I guess it was in the late 2010s that the facade was finally crumbling down, and lots of people who had been big fans and proponents of Oldschool Roleplaying stopped associating themselves with the OSR label because the space was looking increasingly toxic. Which meant that the real shitheads increasingly had the space to themselves.

And there seems to have emerged a new space for people still interested in simple RPG systems and sharing free home-made game material, but not wanting to have anything to do with the toxic pit that was left over from the OSR. DIYRPG was put to consideration as a new banner to rally around, and also NSR (whatever that was supposed to mean? New-Oldschool Revival?)

But then I saw something very peculiar happening, I think about a year or so ago. New people coming into this new space being all hyped about DIYRPG embracing both the NSR label, and also using the OSR label interchangeably. Apparently unaware of their their respective backgrounds. And I think it wasn’t long after that that the DIYRPG scene on the internet seemingly collapsed. I heard of several people just leaving it all behind them because it’s still full of racists, homophobes, racists, and other bigoted shitheads strolling around in the open and being heaped with adoration.

DIYRPG didn’t work out because quietly cutting ties with the OSR label and just doing our own thing wasn’t enough. It felt to me that we tried to create an RPG space on the internet was inclusive. But we didn’t explicitly make it a space that is actively anti-nazis, anti-homophobic, and anti-abusive. Tolerance was what turned OSR into an alt-right shitshow, and hesitance to call people out for their shittiness in an attempt at politeness is what made DIYRPG fail. And now most of the creative people making cool stuff and sharing the most interesting ideas seem to be gone.

I have been thinking for a while that it seems strange that the discourse about innovations about RPGs appears to have trickled down to almost nothing, even though I believe we still have barely even scratched the surface of what pen and paper can be and what could be done with the medium. And yes, perhaps it’s because all the people with new and creative ideas don’t want to talk with those of us who are still left running their own personal RPG sites and hanging out on Mastodon. Because they assume we’re still hanging out with the OSR shitheads. And I actually can’t blame them.

I very much would love to have a global community and space of both new people with fresh ideas and old veterans open to expanding our horizons and searching for new possibilities. I don’t know how to do this with so many of the people with the brightest potential having already given up on it and turned their back for good. But to have such a thing work, it can no longer be “OSR, but with a friendlier face”. There must be a clear severing of ties and an explicit rejection of all hateful and abusive people. Awful people can have fascinating creative ideas. But a space for DIYRPG creativity must always be about the community first, even when that means purging interesting works associated with horrible people from our collective discourse. And it’s not like there should be a thought police making background checks. The truly awful people who ruin things for everyone but their bros don’t merely have a slip of the tongue were they crossed a line. They are the kind of people who never back down from something dumb they once said, and instead just keep piling on more of it to the applause of their equally horrible friends.

DIYRPG has the potential to come back. Maybe next year, or maybe in 10 years. But it will only work out for us if we constantly make it clear that assholes and shitheads will not be tolerated, and that brushing away concerns is complicity.

Planets of the Foross Sector: Halon and Ataris

Halon

Halon was the first planet in the Foross sector to gain a permanent settlement after the discovery of three meteor impact sites rich in rhodium, palladium, and iridium by prospectors from Turik. The Turikans began mining on Halon in 478, bringing in large numbers of chosa miners from the other side of enkai space to work in the planet’s harsh conditions. Most chosa in the Foross sector claim to be descendants of those first miners, but statistically most of their ancestry comes from later generations of chosa migrating to the sector.

Halon is a very old planet, orbiting an old star in the early phases of its red giant stage. It is also believed to be mostly dead.

The planet’s atmosphere covers the skies in an almost permanent brown haze that reflects a large portion of the star’s light and is the only reason it is still possible to walk on its surface without protective suits. The air’s oxygen content is high enough for all humanoid species to survive, but considerably lower than what most people would consider comfortable to breath. New arrivals to the planet often suffer from headaches and fatigue and typically wear oxygen masks until their bodies get used to it, which can take several weeks. Enkai born in the somewhat thin atmosphere of Turik or chosa were the only people able to perform hard physical labor under these conditions.

There is no animal or plant life on Halon, but it is quite possible that microbial life could still exist underground in some parts of the planet that keeps releasing oxygen into the air. Geologists from the mining companies reported finding some fossils in the debris from the mines that could indicate that Halon once had an abundance of small shrubs, but no paleontologic studies have ever been conducted on the planet.

After the discovery of new precious metal sources on Sarhat and the founding of the Tauros colony in 547, the mining companies started to move all personnel and movable equipment from Halon, and by 564 the last Turikan mine on the planet ceased operations. Today, there are less than 20,000 people believed to still be on Halon. Most of them pirates and smugglers using the abandoned mine shafts as hideouts, or scavengers looking for abandoned mining equipment that hasn’t been picked clean of valuable components a century ago.

Ataris

Ataris is a small rocky planet largely covered in ice that orbits close to a hot brown dwarf. The planet has a fairly dense atmosphere of nitrogen and carbon dioxide that traps enough heat from the brown dwarf’s dim glow to make it possible to go out on its surface without heated environment suits, but its complete lack of oxygen in the air makes it impossible to survive without breathing masks and oxygen tanks.

The planet is home to several science stations dug into the black rock of its jagged mountains by Takkusat Research from Usomi on Palan over the last 50 years. There are some 17,000 people mahir on Ataris at any given time, but it has no permanent residents and is considered by Takkusat Research to be part of Usomi territory.

Planets of the Foross Sector: Palan and Meruna

Palan

Palan is a mostly barren planet, but has sufficient microbial life in its numerous small seas to maintain an atmosphere dense enough and sufficiently high in oxygen to be fully breathable for most species. However, the radiation from its sun is dangerously high across most of the planet, and all settlements are located near the south pole, where due to the planet’s low axial tilt, the sun always stays low above the horizon all year. Creating the impression that each day consists of only a very long morning and equally long evening. The most striking feature of Palan’s sky are the planet’s large rings that are visible over the northern horizon during the day and most of the night. What plant life exist on the mostly barren rocks that make up most of the land surface consists mostly of lichens and a few simple shrubs. No animals are raised on Palan, and there are no native land animals larger than 1 cm in size.

Palan is home to two main settlements. Sarantal was founded in 497 by a the Askal Directorate from the neighboring Askal sector to serve as workers’ housing for the construction of a large fuel and repair station in orbit around Palan’s moon. As commerce in the Foross sector greatly increased in the mid-500s, both the station and the settlement were greatly expanded, and gained a large new population of genya workers. At 9 million people, Sarantal is now the single largest city in the entire sector.

A consortium of mahir corporations established the Usomi colony in 579, some 200 km from Sarantal. Over the following century, it gained a population of 4 million mahir and genya.

Meruna

Meruna was the last planet in the Foross Sector to be settled. Even though it is one of the most habitable planet in the entire sector, second only to Kion, its lack of valuable mineral resources had made it completely irrelevant to any of the mining companies that originally drove the development of the sector. The Keritika colony was founded by firax in 631, after most of the large colonial companies had already ceased operations in the sector and sold off most of their remaining assets. The purpose of Keritika had never been to become economically profitable, but to primarily to serve as a self-sustaining embassy of the firax states closer to the regions of space inhabited by the vhen, mahir, and tubaki. The only direct neighbors of firax space are the enkai and chosa, and they considered it in their collective best interest to have direct contact and establish relationships with other peoples as well.

Meruna is a largely oceanic planet, but home to several groups of large islands that cover about 8% of its surface. Most land is relatively flat and covered in a wide variety of grasses, though there are many types of native shrubs and scattered clusters of small trees as well. This makes the planet very suitable for raising introduced farm animals. While animal life in the sea is extremely abundant and diverse, land animals consists mostly of small birds and burrowing animals, with no large predators that could pose a threat even to firax children.

Though the planet’s 5 million population consists mostly of equal numbers of firax and genya, various enkai and vhen oligarchs from other planets in the sector have been trying to take control over the major private businesses on Meruna for years, and have recently been pressuring the government in Keritika to privatize several state-owned companies to take over.